Hay Player

Tom Dyckhoff

The Age of Spectacle: Adventures in Architecture and the 21st-Century City

Hay Festival 2017,
Sunday 4 June 2017

In Dubai, a luxury apartment block is built in the shape of a giant iPod. In China, President Xi Jinping denounces the trend of constructing ‘bizarre’ new buildings in wacky shapes and colours. In Cincinnati, celebrity architect Zaha Hadid is paid millions to design a single ‘iconic’ structure – with the hope of single-handedly transforming the region’s ailing fortunes. These incidents are all part of the same story: the rise of the age of spectacle. Chaired by Simon Jenkins.